Phantom Conscience
by Shinteetah
Summary: And this time, all we had to sacrifice was our world. SETTING: PostShambala. Spoilers present!


WARNING: MAJOR END OF SERIES AND SHAMBALA SPOILERS FOLLOW.

My arm is hurting again.

Not my left arm; that one gets sore with training or fighting, but that is nothing unusual. My right arm hurts, inside the metal. But I don't have a right arm.

Winry says that's not unusual, either. _Phantom limb_, she calls it. But I don't believe in phantoms. My arm is not a phantom – it's here, it's solid, it's metal. It's a part of me. Fullmetal. I am Fullmetal. I don't believe in phantoms.

It's dark, and cold. Maybe that is why my arm hurts; there is no insulation within automail, and while the nerve connections are supposed to be shielded, maybe the nerves feel the cold and they hurt. But we didn't have much choice about the cold; there is no inn along this part of the road. Unusual for Germany.

Germany. Such an odd, unfamiliar word, even yet.

Alphonse of course has no memories of this place, but I could not stay in the house where I had lived with another Alphonse. How can I look at my brother Al, standing where another Al enthusiastically explained a different alchemy of propellent fuels and gravitational barriers? No, I had to leave that place. I don't want to remember it now – now that I know, only now, that Alphonse thought he was merely a replacement, that I found him and clung to him because he resembled someone superficially. How could I have been so cruel as to allow him to think that? So callous, not to see that was what he believed?

Yes, I admit that when I first saw him, all I could think of was that this, _this _is what Al would have been! But he was more than an ambulatory physical shell. He was human, fully human, with his own experiences, hopes, dreams. Loving him merely because he resembled my lost brother would have been as foolish as loving a woman who resembled a lost bride. I didn't realize that at first; I think at times I thought of him as my younger brother, somehow without memories of who we were and what we had done. But when he told me that he was more than a shadow of someone I had known, when I realized what I had done, there was no time to reflect, to explain, to mend. And when I returned, I had lost him.

I will not lose Al. Not again.

I have him now. He is behind me, sleeping. He is the younger brother I remember – I can see it in his eyes, I recognize his very being. I don't need to see a physical body to know my brother.

But there is something different, now. I don't understand, but it's real. I remember his desperate confession years ago that he was forgetting the sensations of flesh and blood, that his deepest desire was to be able to touch as we did when we were children, clasping hands as we ran to the river, tumbling over one another in play, even fighting. I know how he craved human touch. And I know how I longed for the same thing, how I swore I would see my brother in his body once more, how I sacrificed my own life to give him flesh.

Why, then? Had I spent too many years unable to touch him, barricaded from his soul by his metal and mine? Do I carry the memory of not daring to touch even the armor, lest the Stone react? Why, when I saw him for the first time, really saw him in his own body, the one I died to give him – why could I only look at him and manage a feeble greeting?

Why did he only look at me?

And once that tremulous moment had passed, we could never recover it, not with all the alchemy in the universe. Even now he lies behind me, his back and mine close as we lie shielded beneath our coats for warmth in this hay barn, and our spines do not touch.

I have fought monsters from beyond the Gate, I have waged war, I have desecrated my mother's grave, and I am too much a coward to embrace my brother.

"_Nii-san."_

I turn, thinking he is awake, but he is only whispering in his sleep. He does that sometimes, as the memories return to him. My brother had truly lost his memories – everything we had done, everything we had seen. I have told him a little, what I felt I could explain. He has remembered more, bit by bit. Usually the memories come to him at night, while he sleeps.

I dread the night when he will wake, clutching his torso and weeping for Marta.

"_Nii-san." _Does he dream of me, as I so often dreamed of him? What did he think of me, those years when I did not exist in his world? Did he remember only that my impetuous selfishness and flagrant disregard for the forbidden cost him his body and nearly his life? Did he remember that some taboos exist with reason?

He had dressed himself as I had. It surprised me to see that. I wonder if he meant to recreate me in that world, just as I found a substitute for him in this. As we both tried to recreate our mother.

I told Rosé that alchemists did not believe in God. We do not believe in what we cannot touch, measure, control. That was the truth, then. But there is so much I cannot control. I had to tell Rosé that; her religion was a crutch, an opiate to dull the pain of loss. I embraced my pain, held it close to keep me alive and moving forward. I despised her weakness and unquestioning acceptance. Men abuse religion – Rosé's life was shattered for it, and Ishbal was destroyed with so many people. And yet alchemy killed so many during the war, and I know the precepts of that science are sound. It is human greed and lust for power that corrupts.

Greed. Lust. I wonder if I will ever again be able to say those words indifferently.

Alphonse looks thoughtful in his sleep. I lie down again, covering myself carefully with the coat so that the automail does not transfer the heat from my body. I am still human, with my metal arm and leg. Al – _Aru,_ I call him – Al is. He _is_. For that I am truly grateful. He is alive, and whole, and we are together. And this time, all we had to sacrifice was our world.

Al has his body again, as I promised. He swore he would return my arm and leg, but they are gone forever. I do not mind. I have not had them in so long... I have my automail. It is all that remains of the Fullmetal Alchemist in a world without magical alchemy.

I worry about my automail without Winry to maintain it. I feel a little hollow when I think of Winry... I left her behind from the beginning, long before I ever came to this world. She was a part of what had come before that fell night, and I think I didn't feel she could really understand the guilt and the regret and the resolution I carried. But she is out of reach now, too, left behind in our home world. So I'll have to be careful with my automail, I suppose.

Even if the cold seeps through and chills the wiring, which shouldn't, cannot affect the bound nerve attachments, making my brain think the cold is actually little muscle twinges deep within an arm I lost when I was ten years old. There is only what can be measured. I don't believe in phantoms.

My arm is hurting again.

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The Japanese pronunciation of "Al" would be "aru." "Aru" is the root of the Japanese verb "to be." Was this Arakawa Hiromu's linguistic play with what it means to exist?


End file.
